By: Scott Johnson on December 20, 2012
In the epic battle between The Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers, a new YouTube top ten list is starting to create a stir. YouTube has compiled a list called the 2012 YouTube Top Trailers Leaderboard, which shows the movie, TV, and gaming trailers which most moved audiences. According to YouTube, the trailers were rated on a winning combination of promotion (paid ads) and popularity (organic views)
The top two trailers on the list are for the Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 video game. The first movie trailer to show up on the list is The Dark Knight Rises, which finishes in the number three spot. Other movie trailers that make the top ten list include Skyfall, The Hunger Games, and Ted.
Surprisingly absent from the list is The Avengers, which was the highest grossing movie of the year. The Avengers absence from the list is where the controversy comes in. The Dark Knight Rises trailer is listed as having 26,825,747 views, which is actually a lower view count than the most popular Avengers trailer. The Marvel’s Avengers Assemble trailer uploaded by the MarvelUK site has 38,583,931 views. Not only does The Avengers have more views than The Dark Knight Rises, but the Iron Man 3 trailer beats them both. Iron Man 3 has 48,087,891 views.
So what’s up with YouTube’s ranking? Is YouTube made up of a bunch of DC Comics fanboys? Odds are the Marvel Comics snub probably has something to do with some unexplained criteria of how the list is compiled. The list does mention it’s a combination of paid ads and organic views, so one theory could be that only trailers that had some paid ads were included. The Avengers might have been left off if Marvel Studios didn’t pay for any ads.
